Parking at the door
Free public parking is available on site. It works on a first-come basis and cannot be reserved in advance, so arrive as you please and leave the car where it lands for the length of your stay.
South Brent · Dartmoor · Devon
The Pack Horse Inn
Four rooms above a bar that belongs to the village first and to visitors second. The entrance to Dartmoor National Park is a few hundred metres from the front door, and the lanes out of South Brent run in every direction from there.
The Pack Horse Inn has stood on Plymouth Road for longer than anyone in the bar can reliably remember. Upstairs there are four straightforward rooms, kept comfortable and quiet for people who spend their days outside. Downstairs there is a bar shared with the people who actually live here, which is the part most visitors end up talking about afterwards.
Walk out of the front door and the entrance to Dartmoor National Park is a few hundred metres away, which changes the shape of a stay entirely.
A working Devon village, not a showpiece
“The bar is the village’s own, and the moor begins at the end of the road. Everything else here follows from those two facts.”
South Brent sits at the point where the farmland of the South Hams begins to rise into open moor. There is a river, a row of stone cottages, a handful of shops and a church tower, and the village goes about its business whether visitors are here or not. That is much of the appeal.
The inn makes a practical base for all of it. Walkers head straight up onto the moor, cyclists follow the lanes towards the Avon valley, and anglers find water within a short drive.
Totnes lies about twelve kilometres away, with Ivybridge and Buckfastleigh stations closer still, so days out across South Devon rarely need much planning. Most guests set off after breakfast with a rough idea and come back with a better one.
Come back in the evening and there is a bar, a comfortable room, and no ceremony whatsoever about any of it.
Four rooms,kept simple on purpose
The accommodation is comfortable rather than elaborate. Rooms suit travellers who plan to spend their days outdoors and want somewhere settled to come back to, with a hot drink to hand and a quiet landing between them and the bar below.
Twin Room with Private Bathroom
Two twin bedsBuilt for friends walking the southern moor together, or a family sharing, with a private bathroom of its own and enough floor for two sets of wet boots and a map spread across one of the beds.
King Room
One king bedA quiet room arranged around a single king bed, suited to couples staying several nights and heading out early into the country around the village while the rest of South Brent is still waking up.
Double Room with Private Bathroom
One double bedA comfortable double with its own private bathroom, generous enough for a single traveller who would rather unpack properly than live out of a bag for three days running.
Superior King Room
One king bedThe most spacious room at the inn, again with a king bed, for guests who want somewhere genuinely settled to return to after a long day out on Dartmoor rather than just a place to sleep.
The bar is the heart of the building
It is the room where guests and villagers end up in the same conversation, where nobody minds muddy boots by the door, and where the evening tends to last longer than anyone intended. There is a board for darts and a steady hum that has very little to do with us and everything to do with the people in it.
Kids' meals are available, so families travelling with children are looked after, and there are meeting and banquet facilities for groups who need a room of their own. Beyond the inn, South Brent has shops and places to eat within walking distance.
You come for the moor and you remember the room downstairs: a fire's worth of noise, somebody's dog asleep under a chair, and the feeling that nobody is performing anything for your benefit.
Everything worth knowing, said plainly
We would rather tell you exactly what the inn is and is not than let you discover it on arrival. Check-in runs from four in the afternoon until ten in the evening, check-out is until ten in the morning, and the minimum age for check-in is eighteen.
Read the full guest notesDogs are welcome
Pets are allowed on request with no extra charge. Let us know when you book so we can put you in a room that suits both of you, and so nobody is surprised at the door.
Tea, coffee and quiet
Every room has tea and coffee-making facilities, a shower, a TV, a work desk and linens. All rooms are non-smoking and the property as a whole is smoke-free.
A room of your own
Alongside the bar there are meeting and banquet facilities for groups who need their own space, and a board for darts on the evenings when the conversation wants something to happen around it.
Country on the doorstep
Cycling and fishing are both part of life here, with quiet lanes running in every direction out of the village and water within easy reach for anyone who would rather sit still by it.
No internet access
There is no internet access available at the property. Guests who need to stay connected should plan around that before they arrive rather than discover it after check-in.
Dartmoor begins at the end of the village
The national park entrance is roughly eight hundred metres from the front door, which means a footpath rather than a car park is the first thing you meet in the morning. The southern moor is wide, weather-driven country: granite, bracken and long views, with gentler river paths near the village for slower days.